tiresome but nonetheless always sure of itself

At Least She Didn’t Leave it to the Cat

It’s a good day to be in the development department at the Met, and an equally bad day for the bean counters at the Washington National Opera. According to PND, a former board member of the WNO rendered an $18M gift to the opera “with the unusual stipulation that should that company fail to remain independent the gift would be rescinded and transferred to the Met.”

Now, as the Kennedy Center continues their slow consumption of the capital’s high-brow art centers, the WNO is faced with losing close to 2/3rds of its endowment to an entirely different company in a totally different city, just for ceding artistic and financial control to another party. Apparently the Met can use the money, and hopefully the National Opera folks can petition their neighbors in Congress for a bailout without so many strings attached.